Whilst the sight of tumbleweed slowly spins across the face of Huish Park this summer, two of this summer's football transfers this summer have managed to provoke a fair bit of debate. Both have a fair bit in common, in that they are transfers which ultimately were out of our control yet in another world could have seen us receive either a financial benefit or that of a potential or actual first team player.

Earlier this summer, Joe Tomlinson joined Premier League side Brighton and Hove Albion's Under-23 side on a free transfer. Then earlier this week former Yeovil College student Jordan Storey joined Preston North End for what the Grecians described as a 'significant undisclosed fee'. Yet both had been directly coached by Yeovil Town staff, with the former enrolled on our Academy programme, whilst the latter trained on the 4G pitch at Hush Park. Neither were offered professional terms at the club.

In the case of Tomlinson, The club has already said a fair bit about either his circumstances, or the general theme of Academy progression. As I see it, the basic purpose of an Academy system has to be two-fold:

1. The Academy should provide the main club with a stream of players it can blend into its first team where they have already been bought into the club's way of working and style of play.
2. The Academy should provide the main club with an income stream based on saleable assets that can help with any financial shortfall or give a first team budget boost.

An Academy shouldn't be a sandpit for watching rival clubs to pick off the best of that bunch on a freebie. Yet clearly that is what happened with Tomlinson, no matter how the club tried to dress it up. We invested two years of time, money and training and Brighton took the benefit from that. If it was the other way round you could understand it, but with the Seagulls three tiers higher and with Premier League income it is perplexing.

Darren Way's claim is that he cannot turn Academy players into first team players without an Under-21 or Under-23 level. For that to be true, it would imply the club is structurally broken and has been for 10 years, when they closed down the Reserve Team, a few days after Terry Skiverton took over from Russell Slade, in February 2009. The implication is that no-one from the Academy can have that boyhood hope of becoming a first-teamer. Not at Yeovil anyway.

My personal feeling is that Darren is adopting too much of an inflexible attitude in this case. It is probably true to say that the lack of such a level makes it harder for players to progress. My view is it would have helped players like Sam Hoskins and Kieffer Moore who lost their way at Huish Park but have since progressed in a way that was hard to envisage at the time we let them go. I think it gives a chance for managers to take players out of the limelight and into an environment that is still competitive but not brutally so. And of course it helps an 18 or 19 year old player fresh out of an Academy system to dip their toes in the deeper water, but still with some element of support around them.

That said, the evidence at League Two is that it is not the only path. Stevenage have this summer sold defender Ben Wilmot to Watford for a fee believed to be in the region of 1.5 million. Yet they have no Under-21 or Under-23 set up, and Wilmot had no loans away from Stevenage. He won the League Two Apprentice of the Year at the Football League Awards a few months ago, and got his Premier League move with roughly the same set-up as Yeovil Town. George Lloyd is being blooded in much the same way at Cheltenham Town under Gary Johnson. Both players were singled out by the Football League in a press release this week, supporting the Football League Trophy and the way that had helped those players bridge the gap between their old Academy training, and their breakthrough into First Team football. So whilst we can debate the merits of an Under-21 or Under-23 set up, it certainly shouldn't be seen as the absolute barrier it has been claimed to be.

Chairman John Fry has now set a target to launch an Under-21 side for the 2019-20 season, but of course that is 12 months away, and it feels like a very reactive decision. When the current Academy was restarted in March 2015 there surely would have been conversations had, and structures put in place to enable a pathway from the Academy through to the first team? My view is that this sort of a structure should exist at an arm's length from the First Team Management - unless you are Dario Gradi, Arsene Wenger or Paul Tisdale, then you do not always see the benefit of any Academy policy within your own tenure - decisions made with respect to a 16 year old may not bear fruit until they are 21 years old, and that may be two or three first team managers down the line. As such, there isn't an awful lot of incentive for a first team manager to want that 16 year old to succeed, when he'll probably be out of the building by the time he does.

Darren Way himself stated that he reached his conclusion that Academy graduates couldn't be blooded when looking at Ollie Bassett's attempts to break through during his time at the club. But again Ollie left the building in May 2017, so presumably Darren reached that conclusion significantly before that (particularly as he spent much of the 2016-17 season on loan with Dorchester Town). Hence even there we're talking a over a two year gap between the problem being acknowledged and a target to close it off.

As such, it's not too hard to see why Jordan Storey slipped through the club's fingers. Born in Yeovil, lived in South Petherton, and schooled at Yeovil College on the same BTEC Sports courses our Academy players enroll on, he could have been a perfect fit. When he received an England Schools call-up halfway through the 2014-15 Season that saw him feature in the local media, that gave him a public profile. His coach at Chard Town Under-18s was former Glovers player Hung Dang, who played in the same Yeovil Town first team as Academy Manager Paul Wilson. Furthermore, as a Yeovil College player, he was coached on the Huish Park 4G pitch by Darren Way and Terry Skiverton as part of an agreement with the College.

Somehow, despite all these connections, Exeter City were the first to make their move, giving him a professional contract in May 2016. They then gave him his first team debut in an EFL Trophy fixture in August 2016, before giving him a series of three loan spells with non-league sides to help him get used to first team football. His breakthrough came just after that third loan - at Dorchester Town - had completed. They began to give him League Two starts, instead of more sporadic substitute appearances, and the end result was he kept his place, right the way through to Exeter's League Two Play-Off Final at Wembley Stadium.

The assumption has to be that during this period, Preston North End got interested and made their move. The Championship side are clearly not seeing this as a gamble, given that they've given him a four year contract. In addition, the Devon local press reports that the transfer fee paid was in the region of 750,000 pounds, with the implication that there are also add-on clauses that could be triggered.

Clearly, what's done is done, and there is no way that we can gain from those players. But I'd be surprised if even the hardest defender of the club's direction didn't recognise that we are losing out here, both financially and in terms of what such players might offer on the pitch. There's also an intangible benefit, in that certainly in the past, players such as Chris Weale, Andy Lindegaard and Paul Thorpe have excited fans as 'one of our own', even in cases such as Chris Cohen and Ryan Seager where the connection to the town of Yeovil comes as part of a giant loop via another club.

Thus I hope the club's stated target for an Under-21 side in the 2019-20 Season does become a reality, and I hope that this is the only barrier in place to stop a proper Academy pathway at the club. It will hamper us visibly during the 2018-19 season, in that unless a player like Craig Alcock unexpectedly returns to the club, we will end up fielding only six substitutes (realistically) because of the Football League's rule change on Developed Players. As such, the club is a year late in having such a system in place, and any further procrastination on the issue risks the club being left behind.

How can we possibly let a second year scholar go for nothing and not see the potential, of that player, that Brighton have obviously seen? Surely a 12 month contract should have been offered, which would have cost relatively little in wages, even if he only trained with the first team and sat on the bench when required.To gain experience he could have played in all the Checkatrade games which in the run of things do not matter a jot. A very poor decision to release him in my opinion.
17/06/2018 17:59:51

swjoduk said ...

My understanding was that Jordan Storey and Joe Charles where both in the Yeovil youth set up and when it was closed they both joined Exeter City I am sure this is what I read online possibly on their ECFC profiles
19/06/2018 12:33:39

Badger said ...

Joe Charles was definitely a YTFC U15s player, so that bit would be true. I did do a search around on Jordan Storey, but even for his England Schools call-up at 17 years old, the press articles at that time didn't mention any YTFC connection and neither did Exeter (but they did for Joe Charles and one other they took on). However, it's not impossible given that until players break into our U18s side, they very rarely get mentioned. Jordan would have been about 14 years old when our old CoE closed down.
19/06/2018 23:21:55

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